Seeing the Elephant : Texas Tech University Press : 9780896725041 : 0896725049 : 30 Jul 2003 : "The target audience for this book is middle and high school students. However, its information will appeals to a far broader audience. . . . .A useful introduction to trail travel and associated incidents."?Journal of the West"[A] little gem of a book."?Overland JournalTheirs has been called America's single largest voluntary, historical migration. From the late 1830's to the mid-1870's?a span of just over forty years?nearly half a million ordinary folk left farms and families, friends, and all that was familiar and turned their faces west to Oregon, to California, to the valley of the Great Salt Lake, and to the gold fields of Montana. All "saw the elephant" along the Oregon Trail.Whether viewed from the perspective of Manifest Destiny or through the vision-dreams of tribal elders, this mass overland migration to the "Land of Milk and Honey" forever changed our nation and forever altered th